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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Ind. Law - "Maybe elected city leaders now realize they could have helped the situation months and months ago if they simply took a stand regarding Wilder instead of sitting on their hands."

Until now, the most recent ILB entry on Peggy Wilder was this one from June 17, 2010, quoting a report from the Jeffersonville News & Tribune that:

Jeffersonville Clerk-Treasurer Peggy Wilder has been charged with conversion, a class A misdemeanor, in relation to allegations that she used a city credit card for personal purchases.
As noted in this ILB entry from Jan. 1, 2010, "The ILB has posted a number of entries involving either attorney Larry Wilder or Peggy Wilder, both of Jeffersonville, Clark County, over the past several years."

So many entries, in fact, that, that the ILB intentionally did not blog this N&T story from August 3, 2010, by David A. Mann, that began:

JEFFERSONVILLE — Despite the fact that Clerk-Treasurer Peggy Wilder routinely has not showed up for work — and continues to collect a $65,000-per-year city salary — the Jeffersonville City Council passed a resolution Monday night saying that there had not been a general failure to perform the official duties of her office.

Further, the resolution serves as a indication that the council will not pursue impeachment for the controversial clerk. It comes as a response to numerous calls from residents for the council and Mayor Tom Galligan to address her repeated absences. Wilder also has had legal trouble in recent years, charged in Indiana with conversion, a class A misdemeanor for allegedly using city credit cards for personal purchases. She ended up paying for the charges, not the city.

She was also sentenced to community service for a misdemeanor theft charge in Kentucky, wherein she traded in a vehicle for which she couldn’t produce a title.

Until now, that is.

A story the following day, August 4, 2010, begins:

CLARK COUNTY — Jeffersonville Clerk-Treasurer Peggy Wilder said Tuesday she’s planning on keeping regular office hours again.

The statement comes a day after the Jeffersonville City Council passed a resolution indicating it would not pursue her impeachment. And the resolution came after months of criticism that she was not showing up to work on a regular basis.

Then, on August 11, 2010, Harold J. Adams reported in the Louisville Courier Journal:
Embattled Jeffersonville Clerk-Treasurer Peggy Wilder was arrested early Wednesday on a charge of drunken driving.

Wilder’s arrest marks the third time that she has been charged with a crime in the past year, prompting the City Council president to say it may be time for her to resign.

Wilder, 44, was arrested on Court Avenue in Jeffersonville at 1:46 a.m. after an Indiana State Police trooper stopped her for a traffic infraction and then noticed she seemed intoxicated, according to state police Sgt. Jerry Goodin.

She was taken to the Clark County Jail, where she spent the night before being released at 9:30 a.m. Maj. Chuck Adams of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said Wilder’s blood-alcohol was measured at .10, above the .08 threshold for triggering a charge of driving while intoxicated. * * *

Last month, Wilder was charged with conversion, a misdemeanor case that is pending in Clark Superior Court. The charge stemmed from an Indiana State Board of Accounts audit that uncovered $85,000 in charges and fees for personal purchases made by Wilder on city credit cards.

Wilder has acknowledged making “a serious error in judgment” in using the cards and said that she, and not the city, made all of the payments on her personal purchases.

Last November, Wilder was charged in Jefferson County, Ky., with theft by deception after she failed to provide a Louisville auto dealer with the title for a vehicle she used in a trade-in purchase. She pleaded guilty under a plea bargain to a misdemeanor charge of failure to register the transfer of a motor vehicle and was ordered to perform 120 hours of community service.

Wilder is due back in Jefferson District Court on Sept. 27 to show proof that she transferred the vehicle and performed the community service, said Bill Patteson, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Attorney’s office.

Jeffersonville City Council President Nathan Samuel, while acknowledging that Wilder is an elected official and hasn’t committed a felony that would require her to resign, said he and his colleagues nevertheless were talking about asking Wilder to resign.

"There's nothing we can do legally," Samuel said. "But enough is enough."

He said he expects the council to take some action at its meeting Monday, perhaps voting on a resolution asking Wilder to resign.

Wilder has not kept regular working hours since her legal troubles began, and last month she moved out of her office at the request of Mayor Tom Galligan and into a former storage room to make way for a financial adviser hired by the mayor.

David Mann of the N&T has a lengthy exclusive interview with Ms. Wilder, dated August 12th. The interview itself took place before the DWI arrest.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener and Ben Zion Hershberg of the LCJ have an August 12th story that begins:

INDIANAPOLIS — One day after Jeffersonville Clerk-Treasurer Peggy Wilder was arrested for a third crime in the past year, state Rep. Steve Stemler said he will pursue legislation to make it easier to remove elected officials who are not meeting “the public’s standards.”

Stemler, D-Jeffersonville, said in a statement Thursday that he is concerned about Wilder’s well-being but feels “a sense of responsibility to respond to public concerns and find some resolution to these unfortunate events as they continue to escalate out of control.”

“It is a shame that these measures need to be considered,” Stemler said. “However, the public’s trust in its elected officials must be the top priority in a true and free democracy.” * * *

State law does provide a procedure by which taxpayers can seek to have a public official removed from office, said David Bottorff, executive director of the Association of Indiana Counties.

Any taxpayer can petition the court, alleging that a public official is failing to perform his or her duties and a judge then holds a hearing and rules on whether the official should be removed, Bottorff said.

The law is not used often, though, in part because if the judge rules for the public official, the taxpayer can be held responsible for all the associated legal costs of the hearing.

Also, embattled public officials often resign before there’s a hearing, Bottorff said.

Last year, state Sen. Beverly Gard, R-Greenfield, proposed legislation to require that such hearings be expedited but the bill did not pass.

Stemler said he has not developed specific proposals for his legislation yet but is interested in tightening up the minimum time requirements that a full-time elected official needs to be working at official duties.

Any changes Stemler proposes would not impact Wilder, said her attorney, Brad Jacobs.

Hershberg reported in a story yesterday, August 13th:
A plea agreement under negotiation in a credit card misuse case against Jeffersonville Clerk-Treasurer Peggy Wilder may be affected by the drunken driving charge filed against her this week.

“In plea negotiations I take all pending cases into account,” said Chris Owens, the special prosecutor in the case that alleges Wilder used city credit cards for personal expenses.

When Owens charged Wilder in June with conversion, a misdemeanor, Wilder attorney Brad Jacobs said, “This was about as good as we could get.” It meant that Wilder, 44, wouldn’t have a felony conviction that would mean the loss of her job.

The N&T's "Cheers and Jeers" column for August 14th includes this item:
JEERS

... to the further unraveling of the life of Peggy Wilder before the public’s eye.

No one wants to see such a personal downward spiral — or shouldn’t want to.

It’s obvious Wilder has made some mistakes — as she noted in an interview with The Evening News on Tuesday, just hours before an arrest on operating while intoxicated charges. It was her third scrape with the law in less than a year.

In that same interview, although Wilder said she was sorry, she also attached excuses to the apologies.

But maybe now Wilder has hit rock bottom and will “get her life back,” as she said in the interview that she is trying to do. Maybe elected city leaders now realize they could have helped the situation months and months ago if they simply took a stand regarding Wilder instead of sitting on their hands.

The council is planning a resolution to be introduced at Monday’s meeting asking for Wilder’s resignation. Read more about that issue in Sunday’s Evening News.

More important than any legal trouble, work history or public persona is human life. Peggy Wilder will have to decide to help herself, but a little tough love couldn’t hurt. Regarding that, there’s a difference in reporting the actions of a public official in the newspaper and people trashing Wilder for their amusement. It’s far past a funny issue at this point.

I hope for her and her family, she’s able to achieve her stated goals of betterment.

— Editor Shea Van Hoy

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 14, 2010 06:28 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts | Indiana Government | Indiana Law